


i'm one with the force, the force is with me

by helenblqckthorn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam is Luke/Rey, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Eventual Relationships, Fluff and Angst, Greywaren Ronan Lynch, Henry is Lando lol, Hurt/Comfort, It's a mix of all the Star Wars movies and TRC wooo!!, Jedi!Adam, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Star Wars AU, blue is kind of leia but not really, descriptions of abuse, ronan is kind of han solo, the gangsey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-11-04 11:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17897732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenblqckthorn/pseuds/helenblqckthorn
Summary: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...There is civil war in the galaxy. A group of freedom fighters, known to all as THE REBELLION, rise up against the oppression of the all-enforcing GALACTIC EMPIRE, who have just suffered a blow as Rebels take another victory against them, by infiltrating high security headquarters and destroying one of the few Starkiller bases.During the mission, the Rebel spies managed to obtain top secret information about a new project, named THE DEATH STAR, a space station with enough armory and power to destroy whole planets at a time. Blue Sargent, head of the infiltration mission, races away from the enemy ships, but unfortunately, she and her droid, who carries the information, become separated during the ensuing battle.As the droid crash lands on the nearby planet of Tatooine, Blue chases after it, desperate for the plans to not fall into the wrong hands. But little does she know, the droid has already encountered someone, and shown them the plans, in hopes that they will help find its missing owner...





	1. EPISODE I: The Droid

**Author's Note:**

> this is the self indulgent star wars au that no one asked for but im writing anyway!  
> its multi chaptered, and is mostly adam and pynch centric. i never really know what to say in these first notes but i really hope u check this out and enjoy it!! also ik im meant to be finishing my renegades fic its just taking a while
> 
> TW: descriptions of abuse!! adams father is unfortunately present.

His eyes open.

There’s something there—a disturbance. Vaguely. In the corner of his mind.

He reaches out with the Force, stretching his touch to the darkest corners of the galaxy, the pits of despair that left his mind wailing when he first discovered them. But like all other elements of The Dark Side, it left him greedy for more. Greedy to devour the darkness, to let it seep it in through his veins and to pour it down his throat.

Nothing.

Nothing new in the darkness. Which means…

He closes his eyes and a snarl begins to curl to what’s left of the burnt remains of his lips. Slowly, tentatively, he turns his gaze to the other side of the glass wall. The Light.

It disgusts him. Revolts him to do so. But he feels something…

There.

He opens his eyes, wide awake.

“Something wrong?”

He turns to his wife. Lover. Partner.

“Something new,” he informs her. “Something… bright.”

She sidles up next to him. The mastermind to his brute force, the brains to his brute. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she stares out of the window before them, into the all encompassing galaxy.

“I thought we had wiped them all out,” he muses, templing long fingers under his chin. It feels like an inherently villainous gesture. He enjoys that.

Her breath catches. “You mean…”

The unspoken word lays between them, ready to be cocked and loaded. She stills as he looks up at her, confirming with a heavy look that what he’s insinuating, is indeed true. That—

“A Jedi.”

“They’re extinct.” She says, flatly.

He nods. “And yet. I feel one. Can’t you?”

Her eyes slid shut, her head tilted to the side as she listens, feels, grasps, sees. Then her eyelids clench, as she falls upon what he has sourced.

“Oh.” She exhales the word. It’s not a happy oh, nor a displeased one. It’s an interested sound, intrigued. It’s the type of sound that he knows she would hum seconds before destroying a planet, wiping out a race, or striking down a Stormtrooper for stepping out of line.

“Yes.”

She opens her eyes, and looks out into the abyss once more. He joins her.

“It’s only one Jedi,” he comments, under his breath. “What harm can he do?”

Piper laughs lowly under her breath as the pressure of her hand leaves his shoulder. Colin watches her walk away towards the door in which she entered, and as she gives him one last glance, he sees that her face is darkly amused.

“Famous last words.”

 

* * *

 

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

When Adam Parrish wakes, it’s to the sound of his old-fashioned alarm. Its irritant beeping penetrates the fog of sleep in his mind, and he slaps it. By now he knows the exact spot and amount of pressure to whack in order for it to shut up.

He rises, stretching out the kinks of his aching shoulders, and thus prepares for the day quickly and quietly. Washing is only something that happens after work, when you’re sure that you won’t be stepping outside for the rest of the day. Otherwise it’s a waste of precious and limited water, for the dust and sand that settles a thick layer on top of Tatooine will find its way into your clothes, bedsheets and the crevices of your body almost instantaneously.

So he doesn’t bother, also acutely aware of the other persons sleeping in the household that will be set off by the noisy running of the shower, and that the bills in the house are stretched thin already, without the extra luxury of showers. Adam is almost certain that he’ll end up with a bruised eye and a bloody lip.

So he skips the shower.

Work attire is coveralls with plain white clothes underneath, but he only puts those on once he’s in the repair shop. They’re also bound to be covered in dust after approximately a minute of being outside.

He packs his bag, and creeps out of his dimly lit bedroom.

Once outside the stone-carved house, he can finally breathe. No disturbances were made, no parents were woken, no intimidating questions were asked, during which he has to fixate on the floor, waiting for the first blow.

It’s a miserable existence. But it’s somewhere to start, he thinks, every time he’s grabbed by the collar, every time he spits blood into the bathroom sink. Every time he’s holed up in his bedroom, fearing that his father will barrell in, knock him down and that the one place in the house that he feels safe will become somewhere else where he has to hold his breath.

He’s still deep in these thoughts as he rounds the corner of a road. And by road, he means a transect in the flat desert where cars and smaller ships started to be driven and wore away a line of stone which is now followed as a street. He crosses to the main road.

Tatooine is most likely one of the least glamorous of planets, nowhere near the sleek aesthetic of Coruscant, nor the trinkity appeal of Takodana. The high street of Mos Eisley  (covered with dust) has most stores (that are covered in dust) that one would need to sustain a (dust-covered) life there, with the annoying exception of clothing. Hence his hand sewn coveralls.

Adam makes his way to the mechanics, checking the time on his battered watch. He’s early, leaving him a few minutes breathing time before starting a full shift. The heavy garage door creaks when he lifts it up, and he finds the small transport vessel that he was working on yesterday waiting for him.

He makes a start on it, lowering himself beneath the vehicle, tinkering at it with a wench.

It’s fixed by the time customers start to file in the opposite room, and he can hear Boyd making chat amongst them. Adam feels only slightly bitter that he’s able to leisurely do that, whilst Adam is behind the scenes, occasionally losing grip on the tools because of the sweat on his hands, more and more grease smudging on his face and coveralls, dust settling in his hair.

One day, he thinks. One day.

When Adam had been about fourteen, after his father had hit him in the ribs so badly that it hurt to exhale, he’d lain on the floor of his bedroom, despair working it’s way deep into his bones.

There has to be more than this, younger Adam had thought, hopelessly. He was sick of the pitying looks neighbours would give him that were averted when he needed them most, the sneers kids on the street would give to his worn clothing. Sick of the life that he was living, and would keep living unless he did something about it.

So the next day, he’d walked all the way around town, wearing his thin shoes down to their soles, enquiring for a job in every business there was, from cleaning Caniphant’s water to polishing glassware. They’d all refused, bar one. Boyd’s mechanics.

The owner had taken one look at his gaunt face, the slight limp, and shabby attire, and had handed him a broom and dustpan.

To this day, Adam still doesn’t know if Boyd had empathised with him, or simply needed a duster. He’s forever grateful for whatever reason, for once he’d started taking interest in the vehicles, some of the guys showed him the tricks and tips of fixing ships. Soon enough, Boyd noticed, and gave him an upgrade to the previous job he’d held. Slowly but surely, Adam had made his way up to where he was now, as one of the top mechanics in Mos Eisley.

He doesn’t know what he’s aiming for. He only knows that he wants to be recognised, for someone to walk into whatever job he has and know him.

Adam Parrish? They would ask, with awe in their eyes. _The_ Adam Parrish?

A lot of the time he feels it’s a foolish daydream, one that would be embarrassing to explain. But sometimes, it’s the only concrete, tangible thing that he works towards.

What he wants most of all, out of that fantasy, is to forget everything possible about Tatooine. To erase it from the story of Adam Parrish.

 

* * *

 

 

Ronan moves his Hutt king to checkmate Noah’s, just as Gansey lets out a shout of expletives and all the power in the ship blinks off. Including the holographic chess set.

“Dick!” He hollers.

There’s a few _clanks_ and _thunks_ and other assorted mechanical noises, and Richard Gansey III’s head pokes up out of the floor, the panel having been removed in his attempts to fix the Camero IX—otherwise known as the Pig. As he so lovingly refers to it as. His hair is ruffled, but not in the usual debonair fashion. This hair ruffle is more of a ‘stressed-and-made-frizzy-by-machine-steam’ ruffle than anything else. Even more distressingly, his usually perfectly glasses are lopsided.

“What the fuck did you do,” Ronan asks flatly.

Gansey gestures extravagantly and frantically, from what Ronan can see in the backup generator lighting. “Nothing! I just tried to fix it!”

Ronan looks at him. Gansey looks back.

“I may have screwed the wrong thing,” Gansey amends, pushing his glasses back into routine position. Ronan smirks and opens his mouth to speak, when Gansey cuts him off in the accustomed expectancy of a filthy remark. “Don’t comment on that. Can you come and take a look?”

Ronan heaves an over dramatic sigh, and pulls his feet off of the table onto the floor. They make a satisfyingly loud noise, and Noah watches him, bored, as he hops into the hole and ducks under the other panels to examine the disaster.

There’s a lot of hot steam emitting from a pipe end, which Ronan stops by yanking the switch shut with a wench. The lights and power shudder back on above them, and he can hear Noah let out a cheer. It’s a good thing they’d taken the wise decision to stop on a nearby deserted planet after the Pig had started making worrying noises, and for Gansey to mess around with the ship and pretend he knows what he’s doing, otherwise they’d have been in some higher degree of trouble in the middle of space.

Other than the pipe, though, there seems to be no apparent problem. He squints at the readings on an old, clearly never before inspected monitor, and can’t decipher a damn thing written on it.

“I’ve got no idea, man.”

Gansey looks crestfallen. Ronan can just imagine the sequence of images flipping through his mind, a somber retelling of The Pig’s life, before it finally ran out of puff. He hasn’t seemed to consider the possibility of professional assistance, and a smile brightens his face when Ronan says as much.

“Of course! You’re a genius, Ronan.”

“But that would’ve been anyone’s second option after fixing it themselves,” Noah’s voice floats down from the main area of the ship.

“Shut up, Noah!” Ronan calls back.

They climb out of the open floor panel, and Ronan nudges it back into place.

“Well, the hyperspeed is still fucked. Where’s the nearest planet with people on it?”

Gansey worries at his lower lip with his thumb in a very Ganseyish manner. “No idea. I’ll check.”

He walks purposefully towards the cockpit, a name which Gansey couldn’t voice aloud for several months when they’d first acquired the ship, as it would cause Ronan to snigger uncontrollably, and at various random points whilst driving burst into cackles of laughter because he’d just remembered it. Ronan and Noah follow close behind, and Ronan flops into the co-pilot seat.

There’s actually surprisingly little to be done as a co-pilot, he’s found. Which means he can occasionally flick some switches, then put his feet up on the dashboard until Gansey scolds him for getting the Pig’s dash filthy with his dirty boots. Noah usually sits on the fold-out behind them, as he does now.

Gansey presses a few blinking buttons on the panel in front of him, and a green holographic display appears in front of him. It’s the section of the galaxy that they’re in at the minute, and Gansey uses a graceful hand to spin it, and pinches to zoom in.

“Tatooine,” he says, sitting back and letting the hologram disappear.

Ronan thunks his head back against the seat. “Tatooine? You’ve got to be kidding me. That place is full of dust and Caniphant shit.”

“Have any other suggestions?” Gansey asks dryly, raising a brow. Ronan chooses that moment to inspect a very interesting scratch on his boot.

“Tatooine it is,” Noah chimes in. Ronan nudges Noah’s arm off of his headrest.

As Gansey programs in the coordinates smoothly, he sweeps a glance down the dashboard, contemplating the beauty of the Camero IX. If it weren’t for the sheer protectiveness of its owner, Ronan would’ve raced a hundred times over in the thing.

Unfortunately for him, Gansey’s protectivity of the Pig is almost as intense as his fascination over a dead religion. Said fixation would probably land them in more trouble than they already get into, if his father and mother weren’t respected and recognised Coruscant citizens. Of course, they already have enough trouble with people always being after Ronan for one thing or another—smuggling was a tough line of business, especially when your dad had left more debt that physically possible—or because someone had heard of what they were looking for.

Almost as if he could hear Ronan’s thoughts, Gansey breaks the silence as he steers them in the general direction of the coordinates. “Did you know that there have actually been rumours of an abandoned Jedi temple on Tatooine?”

Here we go, he thinks. “I’m not staying on that shitty planet for longer than I need to. I’ve got a high stakes card game that’s in a couple of days that I can’t miss.”

Gansey gives a sigh.

When Ronan had been a young boy, his family had visited the Ganseys for one reason or another—Niall Lynch’s work took him, and sometimes them, everywhere. Gansey was an old man in a boy’s body, all serious face and talk of politics, complete with knobbly knees and grazed knuckles. One of the first things he’d said to Ronan, after bedazzling him with smile full of shining straight teeth, was about the Jedi.

Ronan has heard the word in whispers before, around adults. It was a word that you’d glance around to check if anyone was listening, a word said in a hushed voice and a word that if you said in the wrong company, could get you hauled to somewhere you’d never see the light of day again.

It was a dangerous word, and here was Richard Gansey III, throwing it around as casually as one might talk about their holiday, or what they had for breakfast.

Ronan liked him immediately.

Apparently not many people took interest in what he had to say, for when Ronan displayed a genuine interest in the topic, Gansey became so excitable that he tripped and fell into the knee-length grass. Ronan had laughed at him. They had become as thick as thieves.

Then Ronan’s father had died, and everything had gone to shit.

He yanks himself away from those dark memories. There’s an itch he can’t scratch when he lets his mind wander onto those sorts of topics: racing, the tire that had been used to beat his father to death, the dark recesses of his dreams—

He balls his fists.

“It’ll take less than a day to check it out,” Gansey adds.

They’re still talking about the temple. Right.

“If it exists.”

Gansey’s mouth twitches into smile. To him, that’s as good as Ronan agreeing.

 

* * *

 

“Adam.”

Boyd’s voice comes from behind him, clear and prompting. He looks over his shoulder to see his employer standing in the doorway separating the shop and the garage, a sheet of paper clutched in his hand. Adam feels unease spread through him like paint added to water, for he has come to automatically expect bad news, especially when the bearer of news is holding a document. A letter firing him? A pay cut?

He shuts the pod’s lid, and sticks the wench in his toolbelt. There’s no point in running from problems that will chase you anyways.

“I know you’re busy, but could you run out and get a few of these spare parts? I’m sure there’s some out on an abandoned ship or maybe a junkyard somewhere.”

Relief is a cool wave that washes over him. Except—he’s never really experienced a wave before. There aren’t any large bodies of water on Tatooine. He imagines it something like the cool, relaxing sensation of relief though.

“Sure,” Adam says, taking the list. Scanning it, he can see that there aren’t many difficult things to find. Most of them could be found in a junkyard, but he doesn’t comment this. “I’ll start just after I finish this job.”

“You’re a good worker, Adam.” Boyd nods at him before departing to the other side of the door once more.

As it turns out, the job only takes a few more minutes. Adam shoulders on a kitted out bag, straps on a pair of goggles to protect his eyes, and borrows one of the Boyd’s pods that he lets out to the workers.

Driving along the seemingly never-ending stretches of desert fills him with a certain emotion he can’t quite place. Serenity, maybe? All he can see for miles is the colour of dust, the abandoned ships in the distance, and the ornamental moons hanging low in the sky, which is slowly fading into a deeper hue of azure.

The pod comes to a shuddering halt when he pulls the brake over to a junkyard, and he surveys the mountains of scrap metal lain out before him. There have to be at least seven sky-high mounds, all filled with used or broken parts and machines, or even working parts that people with too much money for their own good decide to throw away for no reason at all. Other than boredom.

He sighs. And makes a start.

A lot of time passes whilst he digs around, and the moons become starker and clearer against the sky as the day wears on. By the time he’s found nine out of the ten things needed—well, he needs eleven, but he’s not going to find that specific type of battery in an old scrapyard—there are little cuts from handling sharp metal all along his palms. Every time he sources one of the necessary items, he places it into the long netted bag that he drags along with him.

Adam walks to the last heap, legs heavy and mind elsewhere as he valiantly ignores the rumbles of hunger in his stomach, when a droid speeds out from mound beside him, almost giving him cardiac arrest. He stumbles back, clutching his chest in shock.

“Stars,” he gasps out, feeling his heart sprint faster than any race pod on a drag track could. He had dropped his bag of parts, and crouches down to dig through methodically and make sure none of them had broken. Thank the moons, nothing had.

The droid bleeps out a frantic, annoying sequence of high-pitched noises. Adam glares at it. “You scared the shit out of me!”

The droid mimics the pitch of his voice and warbles something back, that’s clearly meant to be an imitation of him.

“Oh, shut up.” He snaps.

It’s a an old model, white with irregular splotches of black and dark blue dotted around on its body. A short thing, it comes up to Adam’s waist, and has a rotating head.

Adam spares it one last disdainful glance, before gathering his things up and making his way back to the ship.

He’s taken a few steps when the droid dashes up beside him, knocking against his leg. It trills out another series of high notes, and Adam frowns. When he stops walking, the droid repeats the action, and Adam can place a good guess on what it wants.

“I’m not taking you home,” he informs it sternly.

The droid makes a mournful noise, and butts itself against him again.

“What?” Adam squats down in front of it, exasperated. “What do you want?”

There’s a shiny silver inscription of block letters on the front of the droid. GWN-LL14-N, it reads, and Adam is once more perplexed at the droid. They stopped making the GWN line years ago, after they became affiliated with the Rebellion. And he’s certainly never heard of that particular model before.

“What…” He voices aloud, confusion and intrigue getting the better of him.

The droid lets out a different noise, one that seems to be… understanding. Then a section on the top left of its torso pops open, and GWN-LL14-N displays it to him, beckoning him to take it. Adam cautiously peers into the drawer, and plucks out the only thing in it—a transmission piece. He turns it over in his calloused palm, examining the odd edges and strange, official make of it. Then it strikes him, as fleeting as a lightning bolt, and with all of the dread and thrill of seeing one.

“This is an Imperial transmission piece,” he says aloud, feeling his eyebrows pinch together in curiosity. GWN-LL14-N buzzes and spins around in a few circles, as if to confirm that he’s correct in what he says. It comes to a halt when he asks, “Why the blazes have you got it?”

There’s an ensuing, very long sequence of bleeps and squeals that emit from the droid to answer him, but seeing as Adam has never studied the dialect used for the GWN, being outdated and disused and all, he can hardly understand it.

“Woah, woah! Slow down,” he says, as he motions to the droid to calm down. “Now again.”

The same series is repeated, only marginally slower and no less intelligible. He can only catch a few words, if they are even what he hears them as. He can’t be sure, due to the loss of hearing in his left ear.

“Blue? Ship? Lost?” Adam asks it, puzzled. The droid lights up and whirrs, again turning in several circles out of excitement. He’s not sure what it means. A blue ship that’s been lost? The droid is lost and came from a blue ship?

Adam looks at the transmission piece. It looks important, something that wouldn’t just be misplaced. And since it was being carried around by a random, outdated droid in the middle of the desert on a nowhere planet, all conclusions that are pointed to are troublesome. He can’t get involved in things are far larger and important than him.

“Sorry, buddy,” he drops the transmission piece back. “I can’t help you.”

The droid makes no noise, and stays utterly silent—for once. He supposes that this is how robots look when they’re shocked. Adam manages to make it all the way back to his pod without anymore interruptions. That is, until after he’s pinned the netting up on the side with all the scrap pieces.

The droid bashes into the side of him, whining loudly.

“Ow! Would you quit that? I’m not getting involved.” Adam rubs at his leg, beyond irritation.

GWN-LL14-N lets out a loud wail.

“I don’t want to get into trouble!”

It makes a noise that sounds like a sob—and what strikes him as odd is how human the droid acts. Yes, there are models that speak and crack jokes, but they’re all newer and more expensive and shinier. This one is old, outdated, beaten up, and yet as emotional as any child.

“I can’t just take you back to my place,” Adam says, feeling his resolve crumbling. The only thing holding him back is a sickening vision of his father, finding he’s brought a loud, annoying droid home and an Imperial transmission along with it.

GWN-LL14-N beeps, and speeds around to where Adam has his spare parts safely secured. It flips a long, metal antenna towards the pieces.

“The shop?”

The droid spins. He begins to wonder if that’s its automatic response to anything he says that it agrees with.

“They would have a transmission player…” He trails off, tapping his finger to his chin, thoughtful. “Oh, what the hell. Come on.”

GWN-LL14-N screams in excitement, whirring furiously and racing around him in loops. “Hey, hey!” He shouts above the racket. “You can’t be that loud. I’ll probably have to keep you hidden, so _be absolutely silent_.”

The droid stops abruptly, and makes a hissing sound that sounds oddly like someone shushing another.

Adam takes that as agreement.

Once back at the shop, he enters as quietly as possible, and unstrapping the droid from the netting is the first thing he does. Adam stashes it in a cabinet that no one uses, underneath several layers of sheets that they use to cover things in the garage when they’re doing a messy paint job. GWN-LL14-N bleeps once, and stays silent for the rest of the working day after Adam shushes it ferociously.

“Thanks again for getting those parts,” Boyd tells him at closing time, as he flicks the lights off. “You coming?”

Adam nods, and studiously pretends to pack his bag. “I’ll just be a minute. You can go on out without me, I’ll lock up.”

After he leaves, Adam jogs over to the equipment station, rapidly and consecutively opening the drawers, searching for a transmission receiver. His pulse thrums, and it feels like he’s doing something wrong. Boyd could come back any minute, asking what he’s doing sneaking around in the dark, and then he’d uncover the droid and there would be so many questions to answer—

His hand falls upon a receiver, and all doubts fly out of his head with the sheer pull of curiosity. GWN-LL14-N appears next to him, softly whirring, and pops open the containment disc again, showing him the transmission piece.

Adam clicks the piece into the receiver, and waits.

At first, nothing happens, and Adam feels the familiar sensation of disappoint unfurl in his stomach. But then, a crackling fills the dark space of the garage. A wavering, feminine voice speaks as if they’re right next to Adam.

“That’s all there is?”

Entranced, he watches as a display flickers to life on top of the receiver. It’s the projection of a young woman, with dimples and sepia skin. She’s pretty, with patchwork clothing and a choppy haircut. Her mouth moves, and the words follow after, as if there’s a bad connection. The question is repeated. “That’s all there is?”

Then, the miniature girl disappears. And a projection of a large ship appears in her place—but it doesn’t look like a ship. It’s a partially constructed sphere with smaller ships around it, and it completely and utterly dwarfs them with its terrifying size. There’s more hissing and crackling, and then a monotone voice begins to speak, as the hologram follows its words, zooming in and out of the large sphere. The ship is apparently called ‘The Death Star’, a name which fills Adam with edginess. The unrest intensifies as the purpose of this odd thing is described. Planet destroyer, they call it. Galaxy-wide extinction event. Adam can only hear buzzing in his ears as dates and weapons are listed, as well as target locations—planets with known rebel spies hidden amongst the ordinary folk. His heart stops when Tatooine is mentioned, and a sick feeling in his throat plagues him for the rest of the transmission.

At last the hologram dissipates, leaving Adam and the droid in darkness. The only light is the cold red of the receiver, which it lit with when it accepted the Imperial transmission. The girls question is repeated one last time, without her projection, and then the transmission ends, the piece sliding out mechanically and falling onto the floor with a small _clink_.

Adam sits, his knees pressing into the cold stone floor, mind numb with shock. The only thing hurtling through his head right now is the date Tatooine is to be destroyed.

Finally, he turns his head to face GWN-LL14-N.

“This can’t be real,” he says hollowly.

It beeps sadly.

“No,” Adam shakes his head, his knees cracking as he stands up. “I’m going home. I don’t—” He waves his hand around to convey something, but he can’t think what of. “Stay here. I’ll drop you off somewhere tomorrow.”

He can’t even bring himself to be surprised when the droid doesn’t put up a fight. It wheels away, back to the dark corner, into a disused cabinet. Adam locks the store up.

The rest of the night passes in a blur. Too many questions flying around in his head and no possible answers. He can’t even begin to consider the possibility of this weapon, the sheer terror and destruction it would cause. So he doesn’t think. Adam sleeps.

The next day passes as normal, if not in a daze. All thoughts of the transmission are firmly ousted from his mind as he works. At least, until the girl walks into the garage.

Adam is thinking of where he’s going to drop this droid and life-threatening transmission, when a bigger version of the girl in the hologram transmission stalks into the store, and asks Boyd, “Has anyone around here seen a lost droid?”

He drops his wench with a clatter.

 


	2. EPISODE II: The Meeting of Two Parties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After landing on Tatooine, Blue begins the search for her lost droid, only to discover that it has found a companion. Elsewhere, Ronan, Gansey and Noah park the Camaro, and are directed to local mechanics, looking for a repair to their hyperdrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually... updated. its a miracle. this is where it starts to get fun!!! 
> 
> not beta'd so all mistakes are mine.

Blue Sargent is having a shitty day.

Infiltrating high security headquarters of a Starkiller base, one would imagine, would be thrilling, and not without the added element of fear that combines with the adrenaline and races through your veins and sparks at the ends of your fingertips and toes. One would think. 

In reality, the experience of heading up this particular operation is extraordinarily stressful, surprisingly sweaty, and leaves one prone to jumping in fear at even the slightest of sounds. Blue thinks that she may have to check up with medical once she arrives back at base, in fear of a permanent heart condition.

And that hadn’t even been the worst part! Blue thinks angrily, trying not to slide down a dust dune but at the same time pressing enough frustration into her steps that she feels satisfied at her release of anger. After being chased, dressed a too-large, stifling hot Stormtrooper disguise back to her ship, she had had to wait a few perilous minutes for the rest of her team to make it back. They’d finally arrived, after Blue had been forced to duck behind a storage unit and shoot her blaster at the several Stormtroopers who were closing in on her. And  _ then _ , after all of that struggle and perspiration, her GWN droid had been separated from her, when Imperial ships had followed all of theirs out. They’d shot at her ship until the engine had failed, and she’d used the emergency crash landing setting to land on the nearby planet of Tatooine. 

Unfortunately, as she’d spiralled towards the stratosphere of the dusky brown planet, GWN-LL14-N’s section of the pod had become unattached, and they’d fallen in complete different directions. 

So here she is. Stomping through a stark dust-desert, valiantly hoping for any sign of civilisation. 

There are mirages hovering above the hard, cracked ground, the type that Blue’s only heard of in research journals and reports. Or books of stranded people in the desert, days away from death, and all that they can see for miles and miles is sand, and heat so strong that they can see waves of air above the ground. 

Maybe Blue shouldn’t have read so many disaster novels before coming to the desert sector. 

Her pod is completely wrecked, no chance of scrapping anything together to make a faster mode of transportation. All she has is a waterskin that’s running dry, and a wrap for her head, so as to avoid exposure to this sectors star. 

She walks for what feels like hours, legs trembling with the effort of keeping upright in the shifting sand. At last though, she squints and sees the vague shape of a city in the distance, wavering in the heat. 

A smile breaks across her face. It takes a little effort, the sand and salt crusted on her face cracking as she does, but it’s hopeful nevertheless. 

It takes another weary hour for her to arrive at said town, dehydrated and physically exhausted, ready to collapse somewhere and sleep in a comatose like state for several hours. But instead, she drags her feet to the nearest convenience store, and asks for a list of most frequented stores in Mos Eisley. 

The pimply faced, square jawed adolescent at the cashier looks at her dumbly until she raises her eyebrows in prompt, and he fumbles with a town map that has clearly never before seen the light of day. He marks locations for her, and she thanks him and departs, willing her exhausted legs to move and following after. 

“Excuse me,” she asks the owner of the handheld electronics store. “Have you seen a lost droid around here? About shoulder high, kind of annoying and has black spots?” 

The owner squints at her. He has a worrying lack of teeth, and a permanent grimace. “You mean waist high, missy?”

“Huh?”

“Waist high. Shoulder high for you is like… waist height for a normal person.”

“ _ Excuse me? _ ”

Usually, there’d be someone else there to hold her back, or apologise to the perpetrator of her rage whilst dragging her out by the scruff of her neck. But there isn’t, and Blue is cranky, hungry, tired, and generally prone to outbursts when provoked. 

“And another thing—!” Blue shouts, being escorted out of the building while a small crowd watches on. 

Her next attempts are more successful in the not-being-kicked-out department, but unsuccessful in her search for GWN-LL14-N. By the time she reaches the fifteenth establishment, she’s beginning to lose hope and thinks that by the time she searches all of Tatooine, her droid will have been tracked and captured by the Empire and all her efforts will have been for nought, and she’ll be stuck here on this forsaken planet without any way back to her mother and family, and will probably be recognised from the infiltration and captured herself—

She stops, and takes a deep breath. Stop stressing out. She’s just tired. And hungry. 

Last one before food, she decides, turning the corner towards her last stop. 

Does she even have any money? Blue wonders absently, twisting a rusty door handle, and opening the faded red door with some difficulty. She shoves her hands through her pockets, finding a few coins and a few handfuls of dust. 

“Can I help you, miss?” The man with the close-shaven beard behind the counter asks her, and she realises she’s been standing there, thinking,

for a little too long.

“Yeah,” she says, dusting her hands free of all the dirt that had settled in her pockets. “Has anyone around here seen a lost droid?”

There’s a clattering metallic sound, and she turns her head to catch a glimpse of a boy with sandy hair ducking his head to fumble with a dropped wrench, through the door that leads into the garage itself. She frowns, and turns back to the owner. “It’s about waist high, and has black splodges all over it.”

“Hm, I don’t think so.” Beard Man says, unhelpfully. “Someone might bring it in to us though, you never know. People think of this place as a dumping ground for spare droids and part, not that I mind.” He gives a hearty laugh than she doesn’t reciprocate, but he doesn’t seem like the type of man to care. “I can take your name and where you’ll be staying if you want to wait?”

“What’s the cheapest place in town to stay?”

“Well, that’ll probably be The Grizzly Wookie, just up the street.”

“...What’s the cheapest place in town but still has regular hygiene exams.” 

She’d enquired at the Wookie before coming here, and there’d been cockroaches skittling across the reception. Some of the creatures in the waiting room had been picking them up and popping them in their mouths as a snack.

“Ah,” he grins. “You’ll want Ewok’s Inn.”

Blue thanks him, and departs swiftly, eager for a drink and rest, unaware of the eavesdropper in the next room.

***

Turns out, GWN-LL14-N is an incredibly erratic and unreliable droid. Adam has had to run into the road to stop it being run over twice now, for the droid is just completely unaware of its surroundings. 

“Sorry!” He yells to the angry drivers, picking GWN-LL14-N up and running to the sidewalk with it, as the droid lets out a torrid of angry high-pitched squeals at being carried. 

“Maybe if you weren’t such a  _ nuisance _ ,” he pants, having already had to run after the droid a few times after it had randomly sped up, wailing like a siren in excitement in thought of having seen its owner ; at least, that’s what Adam thinks it’s misseen, it could have been excitement at a passing pod or dog. “You wouldn’t have to be carried.”

The droid emits a bleep of indignation, and spins away from him, once again racing ahead. 

Adam makes a frustrated noise, and stalks after it.

After he’d heard the girl match the exact description of GWN-LL14-N, he hadn’t said anything, for it would have looked bad in front of his boss, and he didn’t know what sort of girl owned a droid with  _ that  _ transmission. She may have been carrying a weapon, for all he knows. 

He knows he’s making excuses. But at the time, it had seemed reasonable to stay quiet and out of the way. And this way, it gives him leverage to question her about the intelligence found on the transmission piece. 

“Watch out!” He shouts up to the droid, who isn’t looking where it’s going, and runs straight into a street sign pole. It shudders back as Adam jogs the last few steps to reach the droid, and he fails to hide the unsympathetic tone from his voice. “You’re a real idiot sometimes, you know that?”

GWN-LL14-N blares an angry note at him, and it’s lights flash. Adam raises a single, unimpressed eyebrow. 

He looks up to get his bearings, and finds that he’s just across the street from Ewok’s Inn, and sighs in relief. The sooner away from all this trouble, this annoying droid, and mysterious girl, and back to his ordinary life, the better, he thinks. With an enthusiasm that he doesn’t quite feel. 

They enter through the bar. Adam’s only plan is to hope she’s either wandering the inn, or someone will give him her room and he’ll knock. It’s busy and crowded, and Adam sticks close by the droid. There are creatures from all around the galaxy here, stopping for a night on the way to another sector, for no one visits Tatooine for its tourist attractions. Which consist of: a famous rock that an emperor sat on once, the local tavern that was about as old as time itself, and the racetrack which was barely used anymore. Tatooine is a ghost planet, not used for anything more than commuting and people who had been raised there. 

There’s a ear-splitting track being played by a music group in the corner, and Adam can already feel himself start to perspire at the mass of bodies packed into such a small space. He’s about to squeeze through two giant slimy creatures that he can’t put the name to, when GWN-LLI4-N squeaks, and tries to push itself towards the bar. 

Adam looks to the direction it’s racing, and feels a small jolt when he sees the figure of the owner of the droid, hunching over in the gloom of the bar. He shoves past the last few creatures hurriedly before it reaches her, and slips past two Wookiees just as she looks up and sees GWN-LL14-N. Her face lights up in relief. 

“L4!” She cries, over the busy noise of the area, and hops off of her stool to greet the droid, which squeals in joy and spins so fast that the girl has to steady it. Adam almost finds himself smiling at the display, then reminds himself why here’s here. 

“Where’d you end up? I was so worried!” The girl continues, vigorously rubbing the top of GWN-LL14-N as one would with a dog, and Adam finally gets a good look at her. Choppy dark hair, with startling blue highlights streaked at random, just short of haphazard. Her skin is a shade of brown that belongs to the warm, lush east regions of the galaxy, not to the dry, sepia Tatooine. She stands out as starkly as an Acklay at a dinner party, bright and full of life against the dingy background of the Ewok’s bar. She’s wearing odd, camouflage clothing though—something that leads Adam to believe he’s correct in his earlier suspensions about the occupation of the droids owner. 

The droid bleeps, and swivels to face Adam. The girl looks up at him in surprise, and a flicker of suspicion, though quickly smoothed out, isn’t gone unnoticed by him as it crosses her face. 

“I found your droid out in the desert,” he starts, thinking it’s best to not contents of the transmission as a conversation starter. 

“You were at the mechanics earlier, weren’t you?” The girl squints at him, not quite managing to not make her question sound like an accusation. “You’re the boy that dropped the wench.”

“Yeah,” Adam slips his hands into the pockets of his tied-at-the-waist coverall, awkward. “Sorry I didn’t say anything. My boss didn’t know I’d brought it back with me, and I didn’t want to cause a scene. It’s quite…” 

“Loud?” The girl offers. 

“Mm.”

“Why did you bring it back with you?” The wary note still hasn’t vanished from her tone.

Adam glances around him; no one appears to be listening in. He lowers his voice anyways. “It… wanted to show me the transmission that it has.”

Her eyes widen in unpleasant shock, and her short hair flings out in a curtain as she whips  her head to the side to hiss at the droid, “You did  _ what _ ?”

GWN-LL14-N blares out a few notes in a way which Adam swears is snippy, and the girl scoffs at the response, clearly able to understand perfectly. 

“I don’t care if you thought I was gone, what was the  _ one thing _ we agreed?”

The droid beeps in a subdued manner.

“That’s right. And what did you do?”

It repeats the previous sequence of beeps. Adam assumes they had agreed to not reveal the top-secret information that could cause mass panic, but then again, he could be wrong. 

Her eyes narrow as she casts him a glance out of the corner of her eyes, remembering that he’s still hovering there, self-consciously. She stands up, and though it doesn’t make much difference in terms of her height against his, the effect is still intimidating, as she comes close and jabs a single finger to his chest. 

“Did you watch the transmission?” Her eyes are fierce. They’re pretty, he thinks. 

“You know, if I hadn’t, and you were trying to hide what’s on it, this would a terrible attempt at making things seem inconspicuous.”

“So you have!”

“Yes,” Adam pushes her finger out of the way, and lowers his voice further, very conscious of the nosy citizens of Tatooine. “I’m not going to report you or anything, I just want to know—,” he scrubs a hand through his hair, distressed. “If—if it’s real.”

The girl’s anger ebbs away, her expression turning bleak. Her eyes are cast downwards as she says, “It’s real.”

Adam sucks in a breath, falling back against the bar stool for support. He blinks again and again, trying to steady his spiralling panic at the image of the planet, being blown to pieces. All the life, the people on it—his co-workers, the regulars, the friends he’s made—all gone. 

“I know,” the girl says, lowly. “I didn’t want to believe it either.”

Adam swallows, the space around them suddenly too asphyxiating, too tight. “I’m gonna,” he mumbles, gesturing outside, letting his feet take him out of the door. The world blurs around him as he leans for support against the outer wall, and he shuts his eyes, against the blinding sudden light. 

What kind of power would the Empire have with that sort of power? He can picture planet after planet exploding into a fiery eruption, the mysterious weapon doing whatever it does to obliterate them. It’s a horrifying picture.

“What… how does the weapon destroy planets?” He asks the girl, who’s followed him out, along with the droid.

He expression is grim. “It has a death ray. It’s powerful enough to blast apart even the biggest of systems. I don’t know all the details though, I haven’t actually watched the transmission.”

He shuts his eyes again, feeling ill. “Why are you telling me this? Who  _ are  _ you?”

“The name’s Blue Sargent,” she informs him, propping a hand on her hip as she does so. “And I’m part of the Rebellion.”

Adam has no response to this statement, this day already taken the maximum amount of shock factor on him. Really, it’s the least ridiculous thing he’s heard all day.

“How long have you been perfecting that introduction?” Seems the only fitting way to reply. 

Blue Sargent looks indignant. 

“I don’t know why you’re trusting me with all this,” Adam continues apprehensively, realising how odd this exchange has been. He reckons he could take Blue in a short scuffle and escape successfully, but her calm is still unnerving. 

“Do you  _ really _ think that anyone’s going to believe you that easily? Other than Imperial soldiers who’ll capture you if you run around spilling their secrets?”

She has a point, Adam realises glumly. Only one question remained, and steadies himself against the building, not quite looking into Blue Sargent’s intense gaze. 

“What—what’re you going to do with it?”

Her body slumps. “I’m supposed to bring it back to Rebel base, but I’ve got no ride back. We’re going to use it to try and stop the production somehow—maybe launching a specific attack on a weak spot, I don’t know. Find out the way to shut it down, if our mechanics can figure it out.”

“So this all a real thing? You’re really from the Rebellion. I’m not on some—some hoax show or anything.”

“Of course I’m from the Rebellion!” Blue says, affronted. “Do y’think I’m on Tatooine for a holiday? Plus, this line of droid is only made by Rebel robotitians nowadays.”

Adam presses his palms to his eyes, overwhelmed. “Right.”

GWN-LL14-N trills cheerfully. 

They stand in silence. Adam tries to absorb the information that was just thrown at him. It doesn’t entirely work, and he thinks it might take him a few days. 

“Look,” he says, reluctantly. “I could probably get a ride to the nearest system you’re going to. Or to a place where you can contact them, but you’d have to come back to the shop with me.”

“Really?” Blue’s eyes widen, clearly not having expected the offer. 

“Yeah. But y’all would have to stay under the radar—I don’t want any trouble. You could also watch the transmission, because I think they’ll all be on lunch break.”

She nods her head vigorously, looking more alert and upbeat already. GWN-LL14-N loops around him, flashing its lights. 

He had weighed up the consequences. If Blue was telling the truth, helping her off of this planet with the plans might stop the destruction that would be caused. A small price to pay for that would be answering awkward questions from Boyd, if anyone happened to be at the shop. 

“I just have one more question,” Adam asks, after the droid had calmed down, and they had started to head back to the shop. “How do you know that I’m not just going to report you as a rebellion spy?”

Blue’s answering smile was knowing. “I just do.”

***

“This place smells like shit,” Ronan comments, holding a hand up to block the glaring sun from his eyes. 

Gansey emerges from the inside of the Pig to the entryway, hands on hips, stance majestic. “Don’t be so quick to judge Ronan! This place smells of... opportunity.” 

“And shit,” Noah adds, coming up behind him and wrinkling his nose.

“Noah!”

They’d landed in a clearing just outside of the Mos Eisley, the view from the right side of the ship a slowly moving city. People going about their business under the dry heat of the star above, covered from head to toe with a thin layering of the light brown dust, and a desert that that appeared to stretch endlessly to the left side of him, which Ronan feels exhausted by just looking at.

“He’s right, Dick.” Ronan tracks the movement of an ambling woman, who’s in the act of balancing a pitcher of water, a basket of fruits and vegetables, and a loaf of bread, between her two hands. “It stinks, the people are looking at us like we’re fuckin’ aliens, and it’s a dump.”

The metaphor from old times doesn’t quite work, he knows, but it’s a fitting expression. They’re attracting more than a few odd looks, some people stopping in their tracks to stare openly at their rusty bucket of a ship and the odd trio that accompany it. Ronan reasons that they’re either incredibly habited to poking their noses in other people's business, or have never seen the likes of a few odd tourists and their shitpile of a ride. Knowing Tatooine's history, it’s most likely the former. 

“Excuse me ma’am, would you be so kind as to show me to the nearest mechanics? Our hyperspeed is broken.”

Ronan had been so busy taking in the sight of trash town, he hadn’t been alerted to the fact that Richard Gansey had been let loose on the locals. He swears under his breath, jogging down the walkway of the Camaro, stumbling on the loose rocks that they hadn’t bothered to clear out. The Tatooine people aren’t ready for Gansey just yet. 

He comes to a slow just as a mildly vexed teenage boy points to their left, directing Gansey to the high street and to a place named “Boyd’s”. Dick gives him a blindingly charming smile in thanks, and says as such, before turning back to Ronan. 

“Did you catch all that?” He asks, squinting and holding a hand up to his forehead, to block out the midday sun. The gesture, put together with his easy stance and the fact that he’s wearing actually decent clothing—for once—is irritatingly appealing, despite that Ronan could not be less attracted to his best friend, as well as someone that wears that much salmon. Still, he looks away, feigning examining the town from a distance in a cool manner. 

“Yeah. How far is it to that mechanics? I need to get out of this place.”

“Agreed,” Noah chimes in from next to him, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, startling them both. 

“Not too far, I think. He mentioned something about a space in the back of the shop for ships, so we might as well take her over,” Gansey nods to the Pig. 

“Sounds good to me,” Noah says, then looks to Ronan. He makes a non-committal noise and shrugs, which both of them take as an agreement. 

“Right,” Gansey rubs his hands eagerly, starting back to the ship. “Excelsior!” 

“You can’t say any normal shit for once, can you,” Ronan comments dryly, raising his eyes skyward. 

***

The transmission fizzles out, the tiny projection of Blue having asked her last, “That’s all there is?”

The real Blue sits opposite it, at a loss for words. She feels something wet slip down her cheek, and realises with a dull pang that she’s crying. 

“They’re monsters,” she whispers, hoarsely. “Who could do that to people. Who could knowingly do that?”

GWN-LL14-N croons sadly, rolling to come underneath her arm, in an odd sort of embrace. She leans her head against its cool metal, letting her eyes shut for a brief spell, taking time to ingest what she’s just seen. 

Plans to destroy planets. No, to destroy whole systems. If the Empire ever accomplishes their mission, ever finishes this horror of a creation, they’ll all be doomed. Either to death, or to suffer under their terrible reign forever, both of which are as bad as each other. Complete and utter control of the Galactic Empire means countless innocent deaths, oppression, poverty, and control over all of the people. Crushed under the heel of each high-ranking official. A brief snapshot of a future that makes bile rise to her throat. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

Blue raises her head to glance at Adam, bleary-eyed and drained, and nods wordlessly. 

He hesitates, then walks to sit next to her in the corner of the shop. “Why did the plans have a recording of you at the start? Were you…”

“Involved? No,” Blue laughs under her breath. “I think when I picked it up to steal, some sort of defensive mechanism kicked in and recorded me asking someone on my team if those were the only plans. Nothing dramatic, unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately?” Adam knits his eyebrows, and Blue blinks. 

“Oh… well, I guess it’s less exciting to find out. Which seems stupid to say, considering what’s on that transmission…” she trails off. 

They sit in silence for a minute or two, absorbing the fact that they’re the only people who have knowledge of this terrible, very possible near future. Blue inhales the stale air of the shop, drinking in the smell of gasoline and faint rubber, her skin itching. She doesn’t really know what to do. Adam seems to have the misconception that she has some sort of tangible plan, but really, at the minute, it’s just her up against the biggest, darkest Empire in history. She’s only one girl—one girl that’s scrambling to find some semblance of a strategy, to get back to the rebellion, to complete her mission. 

“What now?” Adam asks softly, rubbing his knuckles tensely. 

“I need to get back to base,” she says abruptly, standing up, unable to bear the thoughts swirling around in her head. “Where’s that ride you said you were working on?”

He opens his mouth to speak—when there’s a loud banging on the retractable garage door. It echoes through the near-empty space, with a metallic twang to the sound.

Blue glances to Adam, who appears wary. “Everyone else is on lunch break,” he says slowly, standing up next to her, and taking a step towards the door. 

The banging repeats itself, urgent and rapid, and Adam flinches. GWN-LL14-N beeps softly, whirring to a halt behind Blue, shielding itself from something it senses behind that door. 

“Who could it be?” She hisses to him, reaching for the concealed blaster in her belt. Hopefully it won’t come to that, as she reminds herself that this was a shop that belongs to people who aren’t even aware she’s there. Reigning destruction on random civilian shops is  _ not _ on the to-do list. 

Adam is now almost all the way to the door, and clutched in his hand is a very heavy looking wrench that he’s acquired on the way over. “I’m not sure.”

“Open it!”

“Shh,” he whispers harshly. His hand hovers over a switch which she presumes is for the door, and he seems to tense up before flicking it, preparing himself, holding the wrench backwards, ready to swing. 

It moves up at a slow, almost comical rate, to reveal… dark, stomping boots. The rest of the person is revealed as the door shudders higher, and the impression he gives is as intimidating as the first sight of his boots. 

He’s tall—well, nearly everyone is, to Blue, but he’s marginally taller than Adam, with razor sharp cheekbones and a mouth that’s curled into a razor sharp sneer to match, donning black pants, a white shirt, and a black vest, and a belt slings around his waist. 

He and Adam size one another up, Adam’s eyebrows narrowed suspiciously, and the man’s bottle ink blue eyes stare him down, impressively threateningly. And that’s saying something from her—Blue’s given some fairly threatening glares in her short lifetime. 

Then another man pops out from behind Menacing Dude, his entire amiable appearance a complete contrast to his companions. “Hello! We’re here to see about a fix for our ship.”

Adam tears his eyes away from Menacing Dude, reluctantly so, to look at the speaker, who’s smiling politely. He clearly feels the same surprise that Blue does, blinking twice to take in the juxtaposition before him, before hardening again. “We’re closed.”

“Oh! Alright—”

“The sign says open,” the taller one interrupts, not breaking eye contact with Adam, and pointing to the main door, behind them. It indeed reads ‘closed’ from the back, which naturally means that the ‘open’ side is front-facing, welcoming people for business. “And what the fuck is with the wrench?”

Adam places the wrench on a surface beside him. “Excuse me for being suspicious of three random people I’ve never seen before using the back entrance,” he says coolly, narrowing his eyes once more at Menacing Dude before ending the stare down, to address Posh Man. “Everyone’s on lunch break.” 

Posh Man starts to reply, but Menacing Dude cuts in again. “You’re not.”

“Sorry?” Adam says, in a tone of voice that indicates that he’s clearly not apologetic. 

“You’re not on lunch break.”

There’s a pause. Blue has been watching the exchange like a tennis match—tennis in the old sense, if tennis was played with ten times the suspension and tension. 

Something moves behind Menacing Dude, catching her eye. It’s a shorter, slighter boy, with pale blonde hair and a smudge of something that looks like dirt on his cheek. She almost thinks that he’s from the shop, until he meets her eyes and mouths, “Sorry,” and inclining his head towards Menacing Dude. Another one of their interesting group, then. 

“Look, it won’t take too long,” Posh Man breaks the thick silence with an apologetic tone, even though, in Blue’s opinion, he doesn’t really have anything to be apologetic about. “We just need someone to take a look at our hyperdrive and possibly fix it. We have payment as well, it’s not problem—”

Adam waves him off, finally giving in with a nearly unnoticeable sigh. “It’s fine, I’ll go take a look now. Where’s the ship?”

Posh Man brightens. “Oh, thank you! It’s just out here. I’m Gansey, by the way,” he holds his hand out to shake, which Adam takes with a firm grip. Gansey gestures to the other members of the posse, introducing them. “This amicable man is Ronan Lynch, and that’s Noah Czerny.”

Noah waves. “Hi.”

Ronan doesn’t say anything, only crosses his arms. Blue rolls her eyes, resisting the urge to scoff, and he notices, scowling. 

“Adam,” said man responds, and jerks his thumb in her direction. “That’s Blue.”

Gansey clearly hadn’t noticed before, for he starts, and smiles at her. “Hey, Blue.”

His smile is like a puppy’s. She wrinkles her eyebrows at him, but he seems unfazed. 

“If we’re done making moony eyes at each other,” Ronan snarks, “Maybe we could fix the ship?”

***

“So… do you work here?” 

The conversation is painfully awkward. Gansey keeps attempting small talk with the short girl called Blue, who appears uninterested, and pissed off that they dragged her away from whatever she had been doing with that Adam guy. She appears clearly uninterested, but Gansey, oblivious, takes no heed of her chilly tone

“No,” she answers, eyes trained on the Pig. 

“Ah. So are you just stopping by, or…?”

She frowns. “Or?”

Gansey laughs, a little nervously, unnoticeable to anyone that doesn’t knows him well. “Well—I just assumed that you and Adam—”

Ronan sighs inwardly. Ever the ladies man. 

“You just assumed that I’m in a relationship with someone I was standing in a room with?” She scoffs, raising her eyebrows in an offended fashion. “Are you being for real right now?”

“No! That’s not what I mean—”

He’s cut short by a loud, metallic clanking noise that emits from the depths of the ship. 

“You alright in there?” Gansey calls out, after a moment’s concerned silence. 

“Fine,” Adam’s brusque reply echoes from the Pig. “What in the stars did you do to this thing? It’s completely busted.” 

Noah laughs, and tries to cover it up with a few coughs. 

“I… don’t have an answer for you,” Gansey furrows his eyebrows in thought. “I can’t think of what could’ve caused that.”

Ronan knows exactly what caused it. “Probably a busted piece of equipment.” 

“Probably,” Gansey agrees, but still looks mystified, rubbing at his lower lip with his thumb. 

Noah shoots Ronan a knowing look, which he elects to ignore. 

Adam chooses then to emerge from the ship, wiping his hands on a grease cloth, unaware of the splotches of grease on his face. Ronan’s chest tenses, as he’s still not fully relaxed around this boy. When he’d opened the garage door to Ronan, he’d been carrying a quietly dangerous expression, secrets in his cornflower blue eyes, and a wench big enough to knock someone out. 

Ronan doesn’t trust him. 

“It should be all fixed now,” he tells Gansey, tucking the grease cloth back into his pocket, adjusting his tool belt whilst doing so. “I don’t know what you did to it, but it was wrecked.” 

“Heh,” Gansey rubs the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed. “I don’t really know either.”

Adam shrugs, then leads them inside to presumably give them the price needed to pay. The girl, Blue, follows after them, and he notices her pocket a small transmission device as they walk through the back end of the shop. There are a couple of small pods resting on ramps, in the process of repair, tools scattered across desktops and the floor, and bottles of various substances—oil, washing fluid—stacked in corners. Ronan inhales, and the smell of gasoline floods his nose. If it weren’t such a cramped, dimly lit space, this would be his sort of place. 

He pictures Adam working away in here, day after day, finishing late, only to walk the dusty road home. It seems a lonely existence. 

“How much do I owe you?” Gansey asks, taking out his wallet while Adam rings up the price on the cash register. 

“That’ll be…” he examines the cash register, looking up to glance at Gansey, but then doing a double-take, staring out of the window with a look of alert apprehension. 

“What?” Gansey looks confused, until he turns around along with everyone else, to see a pack of white-clad Stormtroopers, along with a few Imperial soldiers, making their way up the sidewalk. Right towards the mechanics. 

“The Empire,” Noah says softly, as Ronan feels foreboding settle in the pit of his stomach. 

“They’re here for me,” he speaks at the same time as Blue. They look at each other in surprise, and say again in unison, “They’re here for you?”

“ _ They’re _ coming closer,” Adam warns, and begins to push them all into the repairs room, shutting the door behind him. Ronan can already feel adrenaline starting to hum through his veins, readying for a stand-off. 

“Why are they after you?” He whispers to Blue, as Adam cuts the lights, leaving the room to only be lit by the back entrance. 

Blue worries at her bottom lip, peeking nervously through the circular window to the front store. “I took something from them.”

“Something very important,” Adam adds, which piques Ronan’s interest. How has Adam acquired this top-secret knowledge? 

Adam also looks through the window, but ducks hastily away as the soldiers come into the store. His face pales in panic as he looks as them, and he hastily and silently motions for them to get against the wall. Ronan complies, fingers itching for his blaster that he’s left in the ship. 

The ship…

“What could be that important?” Gansey asks urgently. “And more importantly, why are they after  _ you _ ?”

The last part of the sentence is directed at Ronan, who swallows, teetering to the closest he’s been to revealing his father's secret in years. There’s no way that he’s going to speak it now, in the company of people he doesn’t know, and with far more prominent things on his mind, such as the horde of soldiers in their near proximity. He hisses, “I’ll tell you later.”

“Later?! We might not have a later!”

Adam claps a hand over Gansey’s mouth to shut him up, which is appreciated by Ronan. The bell above the store’s door tinkles, and he can hear heavy, booted footsteps enter the shop. 

Noah waves at the group of them frantically, catching their attention, and mouths, “the ship!” 

Ronan understands immediately, ducking low and carefully stepping towards the open back entrance. He can hear the others follow behind him, their shallow breathing the only audible thing in the room. Then once he’s outside, he makes a break for the ship. 

He may be usually up for fighting, but not with these disastrous odds. And the thought of being captured and put into interrogation where those people poke around in your brain, looking for your secrets… no, thank you.

They all accompany him on board—even Adam—  and Noah slams the button to shut the door before Ronan or Gansey can yell for him to stop. 

The walkway makes a loud hissing noise as it slides up into place, and the door shuts with a loud, echoing clunk. 

“Noah!” Gansey groans, slapping a hand to his face. 

“I forgot!” He yelps, makes a pained expression at his slip-up. 

The booted footsteps thump to the outside of the ship, and Ronan can hear the sound of clicking. The clicking of of blasters being prepared. 

“Blue Sargent,” a low voice is amplified through a megaphone, making the ship floor vibrate beneath them. They all look to Blue, whose eyes are wide eyed and panicked. “Give us the transmission device, or we will not hesitate to board your ship and retrieve it with force.”

“Oh,  _ hell _ no,” Ronan curses, and sprints towards the cockpit. “Noah, take the gunner bay!” He calls behind him, and sees that Gansey is following close behind. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” exclaims Adam, jogging into the cockpit as Ronan slams himself down in the pilot seat and slaps on a headset, jabbing multiple brightly coloured buttons. “Are we just leaving? Like that?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, Adam, but these guys are probably going to capture all of us otherwise—or kill us, if we’re lucky.” 

“Lucky?!”

Gansey slides into the co-pilot seat, side-eyeing Ronan as he puts his headset on. “You know I don’t trust your flying.”

“Oh, shut up. I’m the only one who can get us out of a fight,” Ronan snaps, and notices Adam’s momentary look of horror. “...if it comes down to that.”

“I didn’t sign up for this. I don’t want to be involved,” Adam shakes his head, leaning his head against the the walls of the narrow space behind the seats. “You’ve gotta let me out.”

“Adam, they’re not just going to let you go,” and to his surprise, it’s Blue speaking. “There’s no other way out.”

“Unless you want to get shot at.”

“Ronan!”

“BLUE SARGENT.” The voice from the megaphone is infinitely louder, making them all wince at the volume. “SURRENDER YOURSELF, OR WE WILL START FIRING.”

“Hello, this is the captain of this vessel, Ronan Lynch, telling you to  _ piss off _ —” Ronan manages to say into his headset to transmit to the speakers on the outside of the Pig, before Gansey hurriedly shuts that function down. 

He gives Ronan a dark look. “You couldn’t resist?”

“Hey, Noah,” he chooses to ignore Gansey and speak into his headset. “How’re the guns looking?”

“All working and ready to fire,” Noah replies, the line crackling and hissing. 

“FIRING IN: THREE,”

“I hate this,” Adam mutters, propping himself against the wall in preparation for takeoff. 

“TWO,”

“Buckle up,” Ronan advises everyone, turning the engine on with a shark-like grin, adrenaline now pounding through him. He grips the accelerator. 

“ONE.”

He thrusts the accelerator forward as Gansey lifts them into the air with the altitude stick, just before the soldiers start firing the blasters. The ship shoots into the air weightlessly and towards the sky, leaving dusty Tatooine behind them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly ngl that was a nice chapter to write
> 
> ANYWAYS,, as always im a hoe for comments, kudos and bookmarking so please leave one (or all hehe) if you liked it and tell me what you think!!
> 
> yell at me on [tumblr](https://wylvns.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/Iihnscinder)

**Author's Note:**

> inch resting...  
> ive mostly outlined the next few chapters but i have exams most of next week. will try and upload as soon as a can, and im always encouraged by comments and kudos if u wanna,,, do that ;0  
> hmu on [tumblr!!](https://wylvns.tumblr.com)


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